Van Dijk New(s) Racism - A Discourse Analytical Approach

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NEW (S) RACISM: A DISCOURSE ANALYTICAL APPRO ACH 34

crimination, of white superiority feelings, and of explicit derogation in

public discourse and everyday conversation. The New Racism (Barker

1981) wants to be democratic and respectable, and hence first off denies that

it is racism. Real Racism, in this framework of thought, exists only among

the Extreme Right. In the New Racism, minorities are not biologically

inf erior, but different. They have a different culture, although in manyrespects there are deficiencies , such as single-parent families, drug abuse,

lacking achievement values, and dependence on welfare and affirmative

action pathologies that need to be corrected of course (for a character-

istic example, see D Souza 1995; and for a critical analysis of this book, see

van Dijk 1998).

Both in the US and Europe, several variants of this kind of racism have

been studied, for instance as symbolic racism that is opposed to policies of

affirmative action, such as busing (McConahay 1982; Dovidio and Gaertner

1986). From the point of view of a black scholar, Essed (1991) similarly

analyses the many micro-inequities in the life of black women in terms of

what she calls everyday racism . Such and other forms of racism are typi-

cally indirect and subtle (Pettigrew and Meertens 1995). These are not

limited to ordinary people, or the street, but are also practised by the elites,

as we shall show in more detail for the media below (van Dijk 1993).

The role of discourse

Especially because of their often subtle and symbolic nature, many forms

of the new racism are discursive : they are expressed, enacted and con-

firmed by text and talk, such as everyday conversations, board meetings,

job interviews, policies, laws, parliamentary debates, political propa-

ganda, textbooks, scholarly articles, movies, TV programmes and newsreports in the press, among hundreds of other genres. They appear mere

talk, and far removed from the open violence and forceful segregation of

the old racism. Yet, they may be just as effective to marginalize and

exclude minorities. They may hurt even more, especially when they seem

to be so normal , so natural , and so commonsensical to those who

engage in such discourse and interaction. They are a form of ethnic hege-

mony, premised on seemingly legitimate ideologies and attitudes, and

often tacitly accepted by most members of the dominant majority group.

This unique control of the majority over the prevalent forms of public

discourse, policies and social conduct makes minority resistance (or white




dissidence) against such racism even more difficult and precarious. It needs

no further argument that the consequences of these forms of discursive

racism in the lives of members of minority groups are hardly discursive:

they may not be let into the country, the city or the neighbourhood, or will

not get a house or a job.

Discourse analytical approaches

Traditional approaches to the role of the media in the reproduction of

racism were largely content analytical: quantitative studies of stereotypical

words or images representing minorities (see, for example, Hartmann and

Husband 1974; Deepe Keever et al. 1997; for review see Cottle 1992).

Discourse analytical approaches, systematically describe the various

structures and strategies of text or talk, and relate these to the social, politi-

cal or political context. For instance, they may focus on overall topics, or

more local meanings (such as coherence or implications) in a semantic

analysis. But also the syntactic form of sentences, or the overall organiz-

ation of a news report may be examined in detail. The same is true for vari-ations of style , rhetorical devices such as metaphors or euphemisms,

speech acts such as promises and threats, and in spoken discourse also the

many forms of interaction (for an introduction to the various levels and

approaches of discourse analysis, see van Dijk 1997b). These structures of

text and talk are systematically related to elements of the social context ,

such as the spatio-temporal setting, participants and their various social and

communicative roles, as well as their goals, knowledge and opinions. During

the 1990s work on racism increasingly made use of such discourse analyti-

cal notions (Smitherman-Donaldson and van Dijk 1987; Wodak et al. 1990;

van Dijk 1991; Jager and Link 1993; McGarry 1994; Banon Hernandez

1996; van Dijk 1997a).

The discursive reproduction of racism

How is discourse involved in the reproduction of (or resistance against)

racism? To answer that question, we must know what racism is. Summariz-

ing a complex theory, we shall simply assume here that racism is a social

system of ethnic or racial inequality, just like sexism, or inequality based

on class. That system has two main components, namely a social and a cog-

nitive one. The social component of racism consists of everyday discrimina-

tory practices, on the micro-level of analysis, and organizations, institutions,




legal arrangements and other societal structures at the macro-level. Since

discourses are social practices, racist discourse belong first of all to this

social dimension of racism.

On the other hand, social practices also have a cognitive dimension,

namely the beliefs people have, such as knowledge, attitudes, ideologies,

norms and values. In the system of racism, thus, racist stereotypes, prejudices

and ideologies explain why and how people engage in discriminatory prac-tices in the first place, for instance because they think that the Others are infe-

rior (less intelligent, less competent, less modern, and so on), have fewer

rights, or that We have priority for a house or a job. These beliefs or social

representations many members of the dominant (white) ingroup have about

immigrants and minorities are largely derived from discourse.

That is, discourse as a social practice of racism is at the same time the

main source for people s racist beliefs. Discourse may thus be studied as the

crucial interface between the social and cognitive dimensions of racism.

Indeed, we learn racism (or anti-racism) largely through text or talk.

Because they control the access to, and control over most public discourse,

the political, educational, scholarly and media elites have a specific role and

responsibility in these forms of discursive racism (van Dijk 1993, 1996). By

their control over the crucially important power resource of public dis-

course, the various elites at the same time are dominant within their own

ingroup (of which they are able to influence the prevalent ethnic opinions),

as well as over minority groups, whose everyday lives they are able to con-

trol by their discourse, policies and decisions in positions of power.

The role of the media

There is no need to argue here the overall power of the media in modern

information societies. Together with other powerful elite groups and insti-

tutions, such as politicians, corporate managers, professionals and profes-sors, they have sometimes indirectly most influence on the lives of most

people in society. Whereas the power of corporate managers may have less

impact on public discourse and opinion, and more on the economy, the

market, production and (un)employment, the power of the media is pri-

marily discursive and symbolic . Media discourse is the main source of

people s knowledge, attitudes and ideologies, both of other elites and of

ordinary citizens. Of course, the media do this in joint production with the

other elites, primarily politicians, professionals and academics. Yet, given

the freedom of the press, the media elites are ultimately responsible for the

prevailing discourses of the media they control.




This is specifically also true for the role of the media in ethnic affairs, for

the following reasons:

Most white readers have few daily experiences with minorities.

Most white readers have few alternative sources for information about

minorities.

Negative attitudes about minorities are in the interest of most white read-ers. More than most other topics, ethnic issues provide positive but polarizedidentification for most white readers, in terms of Us and Them. The media emphasize such group polarization by focusing on variousProblems and Threats for Us, thus actively involving most white readers. Minority groups do not have enough power to publicly oppose biasedreporting. The dominant (media) discourse on ethnic issues is virtually consensual. In particular there is little debate on the new racism. Anti-racist dissidents have little access to the media.

In sum, when power over the most influential form of public discourse, thatis, media discourse, is combined with a lack of alternative sources, whenthere is a near consensus, and opponents and dissident groups are weak,then the media are able to abuse such power and establish the discursive andcognitive hegemony that is necessary for the reproduction of the newracism. Let us now examine in some more detail how exactly such power isexercised in news and newsmaking.

Newsmaking

The role of the press in the system of racism is not limited to news reports

or editorials, but already begins with the daily routines of newsmaking

(Tuchman 1978; van Dijk 1988a). Minorities have less access to the media

also because they do not control the many source discourses on which daily

newsmaking is based: press conferences, press releases, briefings, infor-

mation brochures, documentation, interviews, and so on. Their opinions are

less asked or found less credible or newsworthy, also because most journal-

ists (and virtually all editors) are white.

News structures




Especially also on ethnic issues, for which alternative sources of infor-mation are scarce, news on TV or in the press often provides the first facts ,but at the same time the first definitions of the situation and the firstopinions usually those of the authorities or other white elites. We shalltherefore systematically analyse the structures and strategies of news dis-course, and see how they enact or contribute to everyday elite racism (for

an introduction to these structures of discourse and news, see van Dijk 1988a, 1988b, 7997b).

Topics

Interestingly, whereas there are a large number of types of topic in the press,news about immigrants and ethnic minorities is often restricted to thefollowing kinds of events:

New (illegal) immigrants are arriving. Political response to, policies about (new) immigration.Reception problems (housing, etc.). Social problems (employment, welfare, etc.).

Response of the population (resentment, etc.).Cultural characterization: how are they different?Complications and negative characterization: how are they deviant? Focus on threats: violence, crime, drugs, prostitution. Political response: policies to stop immigration, expulsion, and so on. Integration conflicts.

In each of these cases, even potentially neutral topics, such as immigration,housing, employment or cultural immigration, soon tend to have a negativedimension: immigration may be topicalized as a threat, and most ethnic rela-tions represented in terms of problems and deviance if not as a threat as well,most typically so in news about crime, drugs and violence minorities areassociated with. On the other hand, many topics that are also part of ethnic

affairs occur much less in the news, such as migrants leaving the country, thecontributions of immigrant workers to the economy, everyday life of minor-ity communities, and especially also discrimination and racism againstminorities. Since topics express the most important information of a text,and in news are further signalled by prominent headlines and leads, they arealso best understood and memorized by the readers. In other words, nega-tive topics have negative consequences on the minds of the recipients.

In general what we find is a preference for those topics that emphasizeTheir bad actions and Our good ones. However, Their good actions and Ourbad ones are not normally emphasized by topicalization (and will thereforealso appear less in headlines or on the front page, if reported at all). This gen -






contextual reasons, such as the opinions of the speaker about a person, a

group or their actions. Modern linguistics and discourse analysis, however, goes beyond the

study of isolated words, and also studies the meaning of sentences orsequences of sentences and their role in the text as a whole. Thus, sentencemeanings also show what specific roles participants have, for instance as

responsible agents, targets or victims of action. What we find in such ananalysis is in line of the general strategy mentioned above: Minorities areoften represented in a passive role (things are being decided or done, for or

against them), unless they are agents of negative actions, such as illegal entry,

crime, violence or drug abuse. In the latter case their responsible agency will

be emphasized. Much of the information in discourse, and hence also in news reports, is

implicit, and supplied by the recipients on the basis of their knowledge of thecontext and of the world. Also in news and editorials about ethnic affairs,thus, many meanings are merely implied or presupposed and not explicitlystated. Because of social norms, and for reasons of impression management,for instance, many negative things about minorities may not be stated

explicitly, and thus are conveyed between the lines . For instance in a sen-tence like The rising crime in the inner city worried the politicians , it is pre-supposed, and not explicitly stated, that there is rising crime in the inner city,as if this were a known fact .

What distinguishes an arbitrary sequence of sentences from a (fragment)

of discourse, is what we call coherence . One of the conditions of coherence

is that subsequent sentences refer to situations, actions or events that are (for

instance causally) related. But, as suggested above, beliefs about such facts

may be biased, and hence also may affect coherence. For instance, if Dutch

employers claim that high unemployment among minorities is caused especi-

ally by lacking qualifications (and not by discrimination), then their version

of the relations between the facts makes their discourse coherent-for-them,

but possibly not for others. Thus, also in ethnic affairs reporting, the coher-ence of news is relative to the way journalists represent ethnic events (in their

so-called mental models of these events).

Another feature of coherence is not based on the facts of a model , but

rather on functional relations between the meanings of sentences them-

selves. One meaning for instance may be a generalization, a specification or

an example of another. News in general is written top-down, usually follow-

ing relationships of specification: beginning with the general summary of an

event in headline and lead, the rest of the news will specify details. However,

we have seen that in ethnic affairs coverage, if such details are bad for Our

image, specifications may fail. This is the case more generally in discourse




meaning: the levels of description and amount of detail on each level will

depend not only on contextual relevance, but also on whether or not this

will contribute to (de)emphasizing our good properties and their bad one.

For the same reason, another functional relation that is bound to occur is

that of contrast for instance emphasizing Their lack of initiative and

emphasizing Our help.

Such a semantic construction of oppositions in underlying attitudes aboutthe ingroup and the outgroup typically appears, as we have seen above for

other discourse about minorities, in what are called disclaimers . These are specific semantic moves that realize in one sentence the strategy of PositiveSelf -Presentation and Negative Other-Presentation. Typical examples of such disclaimers, as we have seen, are Apparent Denial ( We have nothingagainst foreigners, but . . . ), Apparent Concession ( There are also nice for-eigners, but on the whole . . . ), Apparent Empathy ( Of course it is sad forrefugees that . . ., but . . . ), and Transfer ( I have nothing against foreign-ers, but my clients . . . ). We call these disclaimers apparent not because thespeakers are obviously or intentionally lying , but because the structure of their discourse is such that especially the negative part of the sentence is

spelled out throughout the discourse. The positive part thus especially hasthe function of avoiding a bad impression with the recipients.

Form, formulation and expression

Discourse meaning especially realizes underlying beliefs of speakers, suchas their mental models about a specific event reported in the news. But dis-course is more than just meaning: meaning must be expressed in concretewords, as we have seen above, and these words make up sentences, withtheir own syntax, and (in the press) their characteristic expression in differentletter type, layout, photos, place on the page, and so on. These variousforms or formulation patterns of discourse may themselves emphasize or de-

emphasize meanings. Thus violence and crime of minorities will typicallyappear in (big) headlines, and prominently on the front page, whereas this isseldom the case for other news about them. Similarly, active sentences mayemphasize the responsible agency of the subject, whereas passive sentencesabout the same action may background agency. The same is true for verbsthat are nominalized , such as using the word discrimination instead of saying who discriminated whom. Much research has shown that this is awell-known device in the coverage of ethnic issues, for instance to mitigatethe negative actions of ingroups or our organizations, such as the police(Fowler et al. 1979; Fowler 199 1).




Conclusion

We see that various levels of discourse (and we shall mention some othersbelow) may be involved in the enactment, expression or inculcation of nega-tive beliefs about immigrants and minorities, and thus contribute to racism.Beyond a superficial content analysis of isolated words, a detailed discourse

analysis may provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of how dis-course embodies ethnic stereotypes and attitudes, and at the same time, howthe minds of recipients are managed by such discourse structures. Overallwe have found that both the meanings and the formal structures of text andtalk in general, and of news in particular, tend to favour the ingroup andoften derogates or problematizes the outgroup.

Example

Let us finally examine in some detail a concrete example of a newspapertext. In light of what has been said above, such an analysis focuses on the

ways that events and their participants are being represented in the text, andwhether the structures of the text do convey a generally positive or negativeopinion about Us versus Them.

The news report we analyse is taken from the British tabloid the Sun of 2February 1989. It is presented as a News Special , which suggests not onlythat it is news but also that the Sun probably has done some investigativereporting of its own. It is signed by John Kaye and Ahson Bowyer. Thearticle deals with illegal immigration and police raids of various establish-ments where illegal immigrants were arrested. Given the Sun s circulation,millions of British readers may have seen this article.

The article takes up nearly a whole page, with three pictures of raidedrestaurants on the left, with a band on the pictures saying RAIDED . In themiddle of the article there is a figure with statistics of illegal immigration

headlined HOW THE ILLEGALS TOTAL HAS SHOT UP .Over the full width of the page there is a huge banner headline saying:

BRITAIN INVADED BY AN ARMY OF ILLEGALS

Let us begin our analysis, quite appropriately, with this not exactly unob-

trusive headline. Theoretically, headlines express the major topic of an

article. In this case, the topic is illegal immigration more generally, and not

(as in most news items) a specific event. This is also the reason why this is a

News Special , and not a normal news report. News specials may deal with

an issue, and in that respect are more like background articles.




In our analysis, we shall print theoretical terms in bold italic, so as to high-

light what kind of analytical concept is being used in the description. Impli-

cations and interpretations are printed in italic, and relate to the structures

of news on ethnic affairs dealt with above. Instead of dealing with each

phenomenon separately, we study them in an integrated way for various

fragments, since they often are closely related. Words used in the article

quoted in our running text are signalled by quotation marks. The most obvious property of this headline is its rhetoric, as is common in

tabloid headlines, namely, the hyperbolic use of metaphors. Thus, enteringBritain is conceptualized as an invasion , which is a common negativemetaphor to represent immigration, and the immigrants are described with ametaphor of the same military register, namely, as an army. Obviously, suchmetaphors are hardly innocent, and the use of military metaphors impliesthat immigrants are both violent and a threat . We have seen that violence andthreat among the main properties of the meaning of news discourse on immi-grants. However, the violence and threat is not merely that of some indi-viduals coming in, but is suggested to be massive and organized , as is the casefor an army. Moreover, invasion does not merely imply a violent act, but also

a massive threat, namely a massive threat from abroad. The target of thisthreat is Britain, which is topicalized in the headline (it occurs in first positionof the headline and the article), so that it is highlighted as the victim of theforeign army. On the other hand the passive sentence construction empha-sizes the news by putting the invasion by an army of illegals as the comment of the sentence. Note, finally, that only one dimension of the immigrantsis selected in naming them, namely, that they are illegal . This lexicalizatio n is adopted also in the mainstream press in most European countries andNorth America to describe undocumented immigrants. Beside the massiveviolence of their entry, immigrants are thus also associated with breaking thelaw, and hence implicitly with crime.

It needs no further comment that at various levels of the structure of this

headline immigrants are being described very negatively according to thethird main topic of ethnic issues, namely They are a Threat to Us . But even

the notion of Threat is not strong enough, and here further emphasized by

stereotypical hyperbolic metaphors used to describe an Outside Threat.

Let us now consider some other fragments of this News Special . The

lead, printed over three columns, reads as follows:

1 BRITAIN is being swamped by a tide of illegal immigrants so desperatefor a job that they will work for a pittance in our restaurants, cafes andnightclubs.




As usual, leads express the macrostructure of the text, and thus further spec-

ify the main topic expressed in the headline. Whereas the headline further

abstracts from illegals working in restaurants and other establishments,

and describes Britain in general, here further information about the more

specific location or targets of the foreign army is given. However, also in

this lead sentence, Britain is topicalized as the point of focus, the target of

the army, and thus not only syntactically marked by the passive sentence, butalso further graphically emphasized by the use of capital letters.

Then the other standard metaphor is being used to negatively describe the

arrival of foreigners, namely, that of threatening water, namely, by

swamped and tide . The swamp metaphor is well known in Britain,

because it was used by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 when she said she under-

stood ordinary British people being rather swamped by people with an

alien culture. Again, the actors are being described as being illegal , a form

of rhetorical repetition that further emphasizes that the immigrants break

the law and are hence criminals.

There follows an apparent local rupture in the dominant negative mean-

ings in the characterization of the immigrants when they are being

described as desperate . Such a description usually implies empathy, and

such empathy is inconsistent with a description of immigrants in the threat-

ening terms of an army or a tide . However, the rest of the sentence shows

that this description is not necessarily one of empathy, but rather explains

why the immigrant workers are prepared to work for a pittance . This

implies that they are also an economic threat to the country, because they

thus easily are able to compete against legal workers. This implied mean-

ing is consistent with the current prejudice about foreigners that they takeaway our jobs .

Finally, notice the first explicit use of an ingroup designator, the posses-

sive pronoun our , thus establishing a clear contrast between Us and Them.

That such a use is emphasizing ingroup-outgroup polarization is also obvi-ous from the fact that the rest of the article also speaks about restaurants

owned by foreigners or immigrants. That is, the restaurants or other estab-

lishments are not literally ours , but belong to Britain in a broader,

nationalist sense.

2 (a) Immigration officers are being overwhelmed with work. (b) Last

year 2,191 illegals were nabbed and sent back home. (c) But there are

tens of thousands more, slaving behind bars, cleaning hotel rooms and

working in kitchens. (d) And when officers swoop on an establishment,they often find huge numbers of unlawful workers being employed.






with the earlier use of desperate . On the other hand, the use of slave pre-

supposes slaveholders , and instead of mere empathy, this may suggest an

accusation of restaurant owners who exploit their illegal workers, as we

shall indeed see later in the text, where employers are explicitly accused.

A numbered description of the raids carried out by immigration officers

follows. These examples are being described as cases , as in a scholarly or

clinical report. This use of jargon suggests ob jectivity and reliability: the Sun has concrete evidence. (n the next paragraph the Sun even claims to have a

scoop when it revealed exclusively the previous day how an illegal immi-

grant was nabbed in the kitchen of one establishment.

Furtive

3 The battle to hunt down the furtive workforce is carried out by a squad of

just 115 immigration officers.

As is well known for news, and as suggested above, numbers are the rhetor-

ical device to suggest precision and objectivity, and hence credibility. Also in

this report, we not only find the usual number game to count illegal immi-

grants, but also other aspects of the operation by the authorities, which in

the next paragraph is said to be carried out by a squad of just 115 officers .

And in the next paragraph it is said that an extra 40 men more are planned

to be drafted.

Note in example 3 also the use of another synonym for illegal workers ,

furtive workforce , which also seems a bit softer than illegal immigrants ,

but which still has the association of breaking the law and crime.

Again possibly in line with the emphatic sequence about the immigrants is

the use of hunt down in example 3, which might show some feelings for the

immigrants, but again the rest of the text seems to belie this interpretation.

Rather hunting down is in the same line as battle , and said of a posse after

a dangerous criminal. Rather than the consequence for the victims of such

police hunts, it is the fascinating hunt itself that the Sun is interested in. Just describing migrant workers as being illegal and desperate to work

furtively might not impress a lot of readers. So, apart from associating

them with an army, invasion, and other notions (like the word battle in

example 3) in the same metaphorical domain of the military, the Sun needs

to be clearer about the negative characteristics of the immigrants. The

tabloid does this as follows:

4 Illegals sneak in by:

DECEIVING immigration officers when they are quizzed at airports.

DISAPPEARING after their entry visas run out.




FORGING work permits and other documents.

RUNNING away from immigrant detention centres.

Although perhaps not exactly featuring capital crimes, this bullet list of the

ways immigrants break the law or violate norms, is clear enough to empha-

size the overall negative picture of them being represented in this report.

Indeed, apart from breaking the law, the Others cannot be trusted: they areliars ( deceiving ). The bold caps draw attention and emphasize this negative

characters description, as does the bullet list, which obviously functions as a

mnemonic device for the readers, in case they should overlook and forget

the trespasses of the illegals (now used without quotation marks). There is only one point where people like Us , that is, possible ingraup

members, are criticized in this report:

5 They have little difficulty finding jobs, especially in London, becauseunscrupulous employers know that they can pay rock -bottom wages. Cash And they are invariably paid in cash with not a word to the taxman.

Follows a description of the low wages (£60 a week far 60 hours of work another nice number rhetoric example, using identical numbers for moneyand hours of work).

Usually the Sun will not antagonize the business community, so the use of

unscrupulous is unexpectedly critical, but the next sentence shows that it is

not (only) because poor immigrants are being exploited, but again that the

law is broken. This topic fits very well with the law and order orientation of

the tabloid, and also the illegal topic of this article. In this sense, unscrupu-

lous employers do not belong to Us. That exploitation is not a primary con-

cern is confirmed by the next paragraph that says that £100 a week is ten

times more than a Thai or Filipino would earn at home, implying that

paying them ten times more than at home is in fact great for them.

Also the next paragraphs continue the number rhetoric: how many peoplewere arrested ( nabbed in the popular style of the Sun), sent back or volun-

tarily went back. Keeping the score, apparently, is important when it comes

to illegal immigrants, and gives the News Special its hard core, factual

character. And if a Thai has overstayed, the number of years he overstayed

is printed in bold caps in the next paragraph: 12 YEARS.

In the rest of the article, we finally get to hear some of the participants.

First an immigration officer who comments on the numbers, as well as the

military style operation of the hunt : It is impossible to know how many

illegal immigrants there are. But we are certainly stepping up our efforts to




track them down. Then, also employers are quoted, and their violation of

the law seemingly excused, as follows:

6 It is difficult for the restaurant trade to work out who is a legal worker

and who is not.

As we already surmised above, accusing one s own is not a common ele-ment in the overall strategy of Positive Self-Presentation, and example 6

shows that the accusation is mitigated by referring to the alleged difficulties

of the employers to know who is illegal or not. This is in accordance with

the strategy in ethnic reporting that emphasizes Their bad acts, and mitigates

those of ingroup members. The quote from the managing director of a

trendy cafe, seems to belie these difficulties when he says that checking the

passport for a valid work permit is all there is to it. The same quote again

returns to the number theme: I d say 1 in 20 people who come here aren t

allowed to work in Britain . A separate side-article, on the other hand,

emphasizes again that it is not that easy to find out the status of immigrants,

because these often use false identities .

Results o f the analysis

Our analysis has shown that reporting on ethnic affairs typically shows the

following properties within the overall strategy of positive self-presentation

and negative other-presentation:

Immigrants are stereotypically represented as breaking the norms and thelaw, that is, as being different, deviant and a threat to Us. We as a group or nation are represented as victims, or as taking vigorousaction (by immigration officials or the police) against such deviance. Such representations may be enhanced by hyperboles and metaphors.

Credibility and facticity of reports is rhetorically enhanced by the fre-quent use of numbers and statistics.

Conclusion

The New Racism of western societies is a system of ethnic or racial inequal-

ity consisting of sets of sometimes subtle everyday discriminatory practices

sustained by socially shared representations, such as stereotypes, prejudices

and ideologies. This system is reproduced not only in the daily participation

of (white) group members in various non-verbal forms of everyday racism,




but also by discourse. Text and talk about the Others, especially by the elites,

thus primarily functions as the source of ethnic beliefs for ingroup members,

and as a means of creating ingroup cohesion and maintaining and legiti-

mating dominance. This is especially the case for media discourse in general

and the news in particular. Systematic negative portrayal of the Others, thus

vitally contributed to negative mental models, stereotypes, prejudices and

ideologies about the Others, and hence indirectly to the enactment andreproduction of racism. Beyond superficial content analysis, detailed and

systematic discourse analysis is able to provide insights into the discursive

mechanisms of this role of public discourse in the reproduction of racism,

and how also the news systematically conveys positive images (mental rep-

resentations) of Us, and negative ones about Them.

Further reading

Bell, A. and Garrett, P. (eds) (1998) Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Fowler, R. (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the British Press. London: Routledge.

McGarry, R.G. (1994) The Subtle Slant: A Cross-Linguistic Discourse

Analysis Model for Evaluating Inter-Ethnic Conflict in the Press. Boone,

NC: Parkway.

Van Dijk, T.A. (1988) News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Van Dijk, T.A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T.A. (ed.) (1997) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction.

London: Sage.



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Van Dijk New(s) Racism - A Discourse Analytical Approach